
3 Women / Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series Robert Altman’s America: A Centennial Review.
3 Women (1977)
Robert Altman has said that the idea for 3 Women came to him in a dream with the heavy influence of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona also contributing to what is one of Altman’s most enigmatic works. Water, reflections, split frames and other devices add an atmosphere of European-style ambiguity to an exploration of female identity and solidarity while the film’s distinctly American setting keeps everything solidly grounded. Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule each deliver astonishing performances as women in a California desert town whose lives intersect and lose their fixity under the pressure of patriarchy and consumerism.
DCP, color, 124 min. Director: Robert Altman. Screenwriter: Robert Altman. With: Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule.
Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
Robert Altman directed Ed Graczyk’s play on Broadway (with Cher making her theatrical stage debut) before he and Graczyk adapted it for the big screen. Ingenious art design transforms a Woolworth’s in a small Texas town near the site where Giant was shot into a vortex of memories and revelations when the members of a James Dean fan club gather there for a 20th anniversary reunion. Altman’s fluid choreography between past and present underscore the powerful draw of nostalgia for some and the liberation of escape for others. Among the stellar ensemble cast, Karen Black delivers a particularly complex turn as a trans woman returned to confront the trauma that drove her away.
35mm color, 109 min. Director: Robert Altman. Screenwriter: Ed Graczyk. With: Sandy Dennis, Cher, Karen Black.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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